


Harvest Season

by Stranger



Series: Shire Reckoning 1412 [8]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, f/f implied - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16389980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: Merry visits the Tooks in Tookland and stays for the harvest season.Pippin and Merry both have lots of options, but they're best friends for life.





	Harvest Season

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during October 1412.
> 
> Written in 2002.

Merry watched the low hills of Tookland seem to rise out of the distance, as he and Pippin rode toward Great Smials on their ponies. Early October weather -- cool but not yet wet -- had brought out patches of red and gold in the foliage. 

"Are you really going to stay for a while?" asked Pippin, for the third time.

"My father says he commends me to watch The Took manage Great Smials for a month or three. For the rest of the harvest season." They were passing crop fields even now. "That might mean until Yule. They've arranged it all already. I think Uncle Ferumbras has had the better of him in business once or twice and Father wants it to rub off on me."

"Oh." Pippin considered this. "Is it going to be like doing lessons?"

"Probably something like." Merry had seen some of Brandy Hall's account books, and also quite a bit of Brandy Hall's farm lands and stables. He'd probably see a lot of the same about Great Smials, but he hoped it wasn't going to take up all of his time. "Mother said for me to be sure to keep up acquaintance with your sisters." He intended to make sure that included all the tweens in the smial, including Pippin.

Pippin turned to look at him. "Do you like them?" He sounded astonished at the idea.

"Shouldn't I?"

"Well, they're sort of..." Pippin waggled a foot and Rowfoot stepped sideways instead of forward, and was brought up by a quick tug on her rein. "...old."

"They're older than _you_ ," said Merry. 

"They're older than _you_ ," said Pippin.

"Two of them are. Maybe I'll find out what you Tooks get up to at home."

Pippin slumped and allowed Rowfoot to slow from a brisk walk to a slow one. "You know them already. I like Brandy Hall better." 

"You mean you have to do lessons whenever Pearl and Flora catch you and at the Hall you don't. It won't actually hurt you to learn some numbers." If Uncle Ferumbras was going to make him learn accounts, Merry hoped he could drag Pippin into it as well. 

They were plodding along the hard-packed, dusty road that led from Hobbiton to Tuckborough and the Great Smials. Clumps of trees stood between them and the fields of hay and corn, or fields with rows of low, ruffled, dull-green leaves. Hobbits in plain work-clothes could be seen here and there among the green-leaved crop, weeding perhaps. "What's that, and when do you harvest it?" asked Merry. Harvest days were hard work, but you met everyone the family knew. 

"Beets and turnips," said Pippin, and sighed. "Soon, before it rains. That's Farley land, but we help them harvest." He sat up. "But it's more fun than lessons. You remember Erin and Allin and Darric and Amy? The Farleys of Farleyfields? Back there is their father's land, and that field is their uncle's. In fact, I think that's Darric. Hulloah, Darric!"

Darric, a sturdily-built hobbit in his late 'tweens, straightened from the row of root-crop-tops and waved, and when Pippin waved back, loped over to the roadway and the two hobbits on ponies. "Pippin! You're back for the harvest, are you?"

"I am. The beets need the Took touch." 

Darric guffawed. "These need a Farley touch, thank you very much, Master Took." He sketched an elaborate parody of a formal bow, making Pippin laugh as well. "I might not have recognized you, Pip, you've grown so much!" Darric's eyes were taking in Pippin as though he couldn't look anywhere else, and his smile broadened. "It'll be good to have you back at home. I see you've brought Merry Brandybuck again, too. Merry, you look fine as ever. You'll come try the new ale, won't you?"

"Of course I shall," said Merry, and saw Darric's eyes go back to Pippin, with the familiarity of childhood friends but grown into new awareness. "Is Amy... that is, is Mistress Amethyst at home?" Merry inquired. Darric's sister had come of age this summer, but there'd been no talk of a wedding or even of serious sweethearts from her last spring. 

"Indeed she is, unless she's at Great Smials. She's great friends with Nellie lately." 

"I hope that means Pimpernel is in fine fettle?" inquired Pippin. He had an unaccountable (to Merry) fondness for his middle sister. 

"Never better," answered Darric. "I daresay she'll be glad to see you looking so well." His eyes lingered on Pippin.

"Do I?" said Pippin, sounding surprised, but Merry saw him smile back at Darric. Here we go again, he thought: Pippin was born to break hearts, and he's learning fast. 

"You and Merry both," said Darric. "How long will you be visiting, Master Brandybuck?"

"I wouldn't want to miss the harvest," said Merry, straight-faced. 

Darric grinned at Pippin. "We'll show this Brandybuck how we do things in the proper Shire, shall we?"

Merry raised his eyebrows. "Or I'll show the Shire how we do things properly in Buckland." 

"Buckland does well," said Pippin, chin high at Darric, and then his eyes slid over to Merry. "We'll see how well the Tooks can do, shall we?" 

"Shall we?" returned Merry. He nodded a farewell to Darric and followed Pippin down the road toward Great Smials.

# # # 

The long dinner table was packed with Tooks and seasoned with Farleys and other neighbors and cousins. Merry sat between his Aunt Eglantine and his cousin Pervinca. While he consumed lark-and-truffle pie and carrots that would have made Hamfast Gamgee weep with envy, he watched Pippin and Darric and Amy and Pimpernel a few places down the table.

Pippin's youngest sister didn't speak to Merry other than a greeting until they were served a second course, peas and quince-and-bacon baked in a dish. She speared two peas from her plate, looked at them thoughtfully, looked at Pippin amid the Farleys, and then smiled up at Merry with a great flirting of eyelashes. 

"Mistress Pervinca," said Merry, since some comment seemed called for. He was busy remembering, with the aid of quinces and bacon, why he never minded visiting Great Smials during the harvest season. 

"Master Meriadoc," said Pervinca. "I mean, _Merry_ , you great charming fool, is it true that Pippin's been tumbling everything in Buckland?"

"Mostly," said Merry, before he could stop himself. "I mean... well, yes, mostly." Took lasses weren't always as adventurous as Took lads, but Pervinca would know exactly what she was talking about. "That is to say, what gives you that idea?"

"It's high time," she said calmly, and speared a sliver of quince with her fork. "I just wanted to warn you that if he sets his heart on Amy, he'll be in for a disappointment." 

Merry wasn't sure he wanted to know all about it. "It would do him good," he said. 

Pervinca gave a silent, ladylike snicker behind her napkin before re-settling it in her lap. "I believe you have the right of it. Let's not tell him."

"You're a minx. And a bad sister."

"Thank you," said Pervinca, with another demure play of lashes. She adjusted her pervinca-embroidered shawl more loosely about her shoulders. "We'll be playing music and cards after dinner. Will you partner me?"

"At which?" inquired Merry, not nearly as alarmed as if the invitation had been serious. Pervinca had been as much of a scamp as Pippin when they were children and if she was was practicing her manners now, it was only practice. 

"Whichever you prefer, of course," she said sweetly. "Would you be so kind as to hand me that dish of nutmeg?"

Later, after an apple tart with Aunt Eglantine's own pomegranate jelly, everyone left the table for the parlors. Merry was afraid he'd actually have to take part in a game played with the painted-pasteboard cards the Tooks (but not Pippin) were fond of. It always seemed to involve doing sums in his head, and that was too much like accounting to be attractive to Merry. 

Uncle Ferumbras trapped him instead. Merry was removed from Pervinca and the tweens and taken off for a short but ominous talk: He was to spend the days before the harvest observing Took methods of estate management and otherwise making himself useful. "You'll see how it goes fast enough, I should think," said Uncle Ferumbras. "I've been looking forward to having a sharp-minded lad to talk to. Paladin is rather set in his ways, and that son of his -- ah, never mind. You're the lad's friend. No doubt he'll gain sense when he grows up a bit." 

"Pippin is no lack-wit, sir." 

"I didn't say he was. He's quick enough when he wants to be, but -- hmmm, why don't you take this?" Uncle Ferumbras handed Merry a small, thick, newly-bound book. "Read a bit of Tookish history. See if you like that kind of thing."

"I'll do my best, sir." He could hope it wasn't accounts. 

"You're a friend of old Bilbo's heir as well, aren't you?" Ferumbras smiled. "Now Bilbo was a tale-teller! If only he hadn't been so taken up with dragons and dwarves and nonsense, instead of real Shire history." 

"I quite enjoy his stories, sir," said Merry firmly. 

Uncle Ferumbras nodded. "So you might, but read that one as well. Now be off with you before the lasses despair of you for the evening. I'll see you in the morning at early breakfast. Mistress Hedgerow will wake you in time, if you're the kind of lad who likes to lie about late. There's a great deal I'm sure you don't know about proper Shire farming!"

"Yes, Uncle," said Merry, and escaped.

# # # 

Pippin looked up from his mostly-empty plate at first breakfast, when Merry came over to him. Merry must have eaten already, for he nibbled the crust off the last half-round of bread and honey on Pippin's plate, but nothing else.

"What are we doing today?" asked Pippin, as they made their way out of the dining room.

"I have business at the barns and stables today."

"Well, I'm coming with you," said Pippin, curious about Merry's very decided air of having something to do. 

"It's not play, Pip. I'm to meet the hobbits who oversee all of Great Smials' goats and ponies. Buckland does well enough, but The Took's livestock is better." Merry finished washing honey off his fingers and put the bit of cloth back onto the scullery basin. He made a scowling face, which Pippin recognized after a moment as his Uncle Ferumbras making a speech. "That is, The Took says so." 

"Well, I'm coming with you. I won't get in your way. I can show you everything in the barns about where to hide and how to get onto the roof."

Merry laughed at that. "I dare say it's useful knowledge. Come with me if you want, but I'll be talking to Master Banks and the hobbits who work with him, maybe for the whole morning." He shot a look at Pippin. "You should come with me and hear what they have to say, instead of going out on the roof to give them fits."

"I've climbed taller trees than any of the barn roofs are high." 

Merry looked at him again, a smile in his eyes. "I know that. So have I, if you recall."

"No taller than I have!"

Merry shrugged. "Not lately, perhaps." Pippin could see that he was thinking about something else. "Come with me. You can show me the way to the barns."

Pippin took him outside and around the south-most tunnel of the smial. The path took them to the stable-yard, where the barns were built up from the ground like houses, but bigger. He led the way into the goat-barn, huge but gloomy after daylight, its rafters twice-hobbit-high over his head supporting rolls of hay with the roof above that. Four long pens stretched nearly to the far side of the barn, each with a dozen or more goats. He'd played in here when he was little; now he saw that the adult hobbit filling feed-boxes at the far side of the barn was accompanied by a small hobbit-boy who seemed to be talking to the goats in one pen while carrying the bucket of feed grain.

Merry beside him was looking up at the hay. "Is that safe?" He didn't give Pippin time to answer. "Never mind, I'm sure you Tookland folk know best about your own hay. I should find Stablemaster Banks."

"To talk to?" asked Pippin. Merry, who loved meeting everyone and finding out everything, was holding back as though he were not entirely eager about this new adventure.

"To introduce myself to," said Merry. "The Took said..." He rubbed his hands down the sides of his trousers. Pippin supposed that what The Took said had to be minded. Pippin's father said so often enough.

"Master Pippin. And Master Merry Brandybuck!" said a weathered-faced hobbit, coming down the central lane between the pens toward them. For the first moment the face was only half familiar to Pippin.

"Good morning, Master Banks," said Merry, very formally. 

"Lodo!" said Pippin, suddenly awash in happy memories of hide-and-seek with his Banks cousins. "I mean, Master Lodo. How are Loham and Marco and Goldenrod?"

"They're well, thank you. Loham's over there with the feed grain, and his lad Wilodo." A broad grin stretched the sun-brown face. "Marco sees to the ponies now, as well as I ever did. Master Merry, you'll want to meet him next -- if this tadpole didn't drag you to the pony-yard first."

"Tad--" started Pippin indignantly, but stopped at a nudge of Merry's toe against his. 

Merry said over it, "No, indeed, Stablemaster. I'm bid to make your acquaintance first. The Took tells me you have his entire confidence in all matters of livestock."

"'Tis kind of him to say so. I will say, he's the kind who'll say so even when he likes to keep his eyes open on all matters himself." Master Lodo's nod indicated the whole of the barn they stood in. 

"I believe you're right," said Merry, and Master Lodo gave a smile that wasn't just being polite to a Brandybuck. 

From there, the conversation seemed to be about goats for quite some time. Pippin, listening, heard that Merry was to work with Master Lodo after the field-harvest days. It only dawned on him slowly that it wasn't that Master Lodo needed any help, but that Merry would learn how to run a goat-barn, and later a pony-barn, by seeing it done. 

"We've a nice lot of nannies and does this year," Master Lodo said, after a long discussion on what feed was best and how much and how often and whether it mattered if the goats were milking or dry. "It'll be time to organize the breeding herds soon."

"Organize?" said Pippin, his attention caught. "I didn't think you'd _organize_ it for them. Don't they do it themselves?"

Master Lodo chuckled. "They do the interesting parts themselves, lad. We just put them into pens together. It's mostly a matter of deciding which billy to put the yearling does with."

"Are yearlings old enough to breed?" asked Pippin doubtfully.

"Once they're grown, they're old enough. Only hobbits get old enough for playing the games first and don't have babies until they're of age. Goats just go into heat and five months later they have the kids."

"Sometimes two," said Pippin. "I know that much." He leaned back against a pen-railing that went higher than his head, and looked over his shoulder into the placid, square-pupilled eyes of two nannies with long ears and short horns. He wondered if they knew they were being talked about.

# # # 

Two nights later there was a knock at Merry's door while he was reading the **Full And Particular Account Of Bandobras The Bullroarer And Many Orcs At Greenfields** , copied in Uncle Ferumbras' neat but rather crowded handwriting. It was, at least, a change from plant-seeding records: the Bullroarer's latter-day family was presently engaged in breeding larger strawberries and sweeter parsnips than their forefathers knew. "Come in," he said, expecting perhaps Aunt Eglantine, who had plans to measure him for a new suit. He set The Bullroarer aside, wanting to think about Bilbo's version of the story before he finished reading this one in any case.

"Merry?" said a voice rather like Pippin's, except that it sounded timid.

"Come in, Pip." 

"Merry, are you busy or anything?"

"Not really." Merry saw Pippin's face as Pippin came toward the lamp-light; he looked anxious and thoughtful all at once. "What's the matter? Did Amy turn you down tonight? Somebody will sooner or later, you know, and you have to be polite about it." 

"Not that," said Pippin. "Not Darric, either. I like him, but I, um. I didn't... um."

"What?"

Pippin said in a rush, "I didn't want to bed with him, so I didn't. Tonight. And I might have wanted with Amy, but I didn't want... it felt different." 

"Different how?" Merry wondered what Pimpernel might have said about it. Maybe it didn't matter, or didn't matter yet, or would never really matter to either Pimpernel or Amethyst. Maybe it did, and here was Pippin as full of questions as usual. And he thought Merry knew all the answers. 

"I said later, not tonight, and I came here to see you."

"Why me?" To ask whether Darric or Amy might be disappointed? Or about Pimpernel?

"To, um." Pippin sat down next to him on the bed and turned and kissed him, not a greeting, but asking a question.

Merry put one arm around him and pulled back enough to lay a finger upright between their mouths. "Pippin -- Pip, I love you already. You know that."

"I know. I feel like I want... you. Not somebody else." He looked up at Merry with puzzled eyes. "Why is that?"

Merry, startled into joy, fought the urge to laugh. "I'm glad you came to tell me." He buried his face in Pippin's hair instead of kissing him again, and pulled him close enough to be almost in his lap. "Do you really want to make love with me?" This was what he'd been waiting for. Now he knew.

"I wanted to tumble with you all summer. I still want to, but I wasn't sure how I felt. Or you, really," said Pippin, fairly. "You're my best friend and it's more than that." 

"More than what?"

"I don't know," said Pippin, still frowning. "I was afraid it wouldn't feel right, before." 

"Does it feel right now?" 

"I don't know," said Pippin. "I came to find out."

Merry didn't laugh. "By trying it?"

"By _asking_ ," said Pippin, gazing at Merry with young dignity. "What does it mean and do you want to?"

He pulled Pippin closer, arms around him, looking right into his eyes. "I don't know what it means, except that I've wanted you all summer as well. I've been waiting for you." He brushed a straggling ringlet out of the way and leaned in for a light kiss, but Pippin leaned in too and the kiss turned wet and clinging.

Pippin pulled back to say, "You do want to, don't you!" and pushed Merry down on the counterpane for a heavy wriggle that reminded Merry he hadn't done much flirting of his own lately. Now he knew why.

Merry rolled them both over and returned the wriggle with a dessert of enthusiastic kissing, which led to more wriggling. Merry gasped and held Pippin down long enough to look into his face. "No more of that, lad, for just a moment. We all know you'd like a tumble."

Pippin's mouth turned down for an instant, but then his eyes slid sideways toward the now-dishevelled pillows and rumpled coverlet. His brows rose eloquently.

Merry said, "I'd like a tumble with you, too, and maybe that's a good reason, but it's not the only one, is it?" Beneath him, Pippin's body moved, playfully urgent, but this was too important not to ask about -- to Merry. Was it to Pippin? "I love you better than a cousin, and better than a tumble. Is that what you want to know?"

Pippin grinned up at him, no longer questioning. "Oh yes. But I was asking..." He wriggled again, with an effect something like lighting a firework, heat hissing upward toward tight-packed explosives. "I mean..." 

Merry could feel himself sweating, but he waited one more second. 

"I mean it'sbetterwith... you," Pippin managed. "I think it will." Desperate eyes gleamed up at Merry, dark in the lamplight, and his face was damp too. "Will be." 

Merry sighed, fire eating at his senses. Was Pippin flirting or serious? Did it matter? 

The lightning-fuse between them burned higher, hotter, as Pippin squirmed again, "Merry..."

It didn't matter. Not tonight. 

Merry leaned down and kissed him quickly while he settled a hand between them to undo buttons. "Love you. Always." 

"Oh, yes, Merry!" Heat flared and sparked through Merry as the two of them settled into a fast, fiery dance of body against body, burning fast and bright together. Pippin's hand groped downward and closed firm around his erection, containing it and heating it as they moved. Merry groaned aloud, tightening his grasp on the body moving against him, and saw Pippin's eyes open at him. The shared gaze between them held unspoken secrets, until climax rushed to claim them a moment later. 

When they'd cooled a little, after a long, breathing silence, Pippin said, his voice almost timid again, "May I stay with you tonight?"

Merry's heart felt a tiny aftershock of joy. "I'd like that. Stay with me, Pippin."

# # # 

Pippin woke up warm and sweaty, and smiled to himself when he felt it. He'd stayed the night with someone, and that was always good.

With Merry.

That was even better. Wasn't it? Merry loved him like a cousin, but even better than that, he said. Merry wanted him, had been waiting for him. 

He snuggled closer to his cousin out of the delightful new habit of waking up to someone ready and willing for tween games, but somehow it turned into the much older habit of curling up with Merry, sometimes even before first breakfast, just to tell him what Pippin had thought up to do today.

Merry gave a sleepy snuffle and wrapped an arm more securely around him.

A distant call and a knock at some other door in the corridor alerted Pippin to why he'd woken up so early, when only the thinnest light came in through the room's one, high window: it was harvest day for the Farley fields. That's what they were going to do today, all day and tomorrow. 

And he was supposed to see Darric and stay at Farley House tonight. He'd promised. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. 

"Pip?"

"Wake up, Merry-my-lad, we're all going harvesting today!" said Pippin in his heartiest tone.

"I know. Before it rains. Gammer Farley said today was the day." Merry hadn't opened his eyes, but his voice was clear. "Uncle Ferumbras says," Merry shifted to The Took's deeper tones, 'Never go against a weather-wise gammer for the harvest.'" 

"When does he say that?" asked Pippin, intrigued in spite of himself. His uncle -- actually an elder cousin -- didn't like to talk business in front of children, but it sounded like he was doing it with Merry. 

"All the time!" Merry sat up, blinking, and threw off the sheet that was keeping Pippin warm. 

"It's cold!"

"Wake up, Pippin-dear-me-lad, we're going harvesting today!" said Merry, but instead of a swat on the backside, Pippin felt a hand slide up his spine and curl around his neck. Merry's weight settled next to him on the bed for an easy kiss, almost like just-a-cousin's kiss, but with a bit added.

Pippin grabbed his shoulders and held the kiss for an extra moment, but afterward he said, suspicious of some joke, "Dear?"

"Very dear," said Merry, briskly and firmly, and bounded out of the bed. "I don't suppose there's any sense in washing beforehand, is there?" He surveyed his naked body, and Pippin's. "Well, perhaps a bit. I daresay we smell like each other."

"I like smelling like you," said Pippin, which was the simple truth.

Merry put down the water pitcher before he'd poured any into the wash-bowl. "Oh, Pip, I wish we had more time this morning. What about later?" 

"After dinner, do you mean? I... I'm supposed to eat dinner with, I promised yesterday... and stay over with Nellie and Amy and Darric."

"Ah," said Merry, and for once Pippin didn't know what he meant. "Then you do that. What about tomorrow's dinner, and after?"

Pippin already knew that the tween-games answer to that was, "Ask me tomorrow," or "Maybe I'll be there," but he said, "Do you want me?"

Merry tilted the pitcher and poured a little water into the bowl, enough to wet a cloth. He was putting all his attention, it might seem, on setting the pitcher down perfectly centered on its mat. "I always want you, Pip."

"Before last night?" said Pippin, testing and a little curious. Merry hadn't made a single move to pull him into bed, ever. Not even last night until Pippin had already jumped into -- well, onto -- his bed.

Merry smiled, and threw him a wet cloth. "Wash up a bit. I always love you, Pip. Always, no matter what." 

"Well, that's all right," said Pippin, "'cause I do too."

"Ah, so you always love you." Merry cackled from under the shirt -- a limp, old one, stained from picking walnuts -- that was going over his head. "I thought so."

"You know what I mean, you clot-head." Pippin finished swiping at himself with the cloth and pulled on yesterday's trousers, fortunately the older, comfortable pair that would be best for harvest-work. "Will you lend me a shirt? Mine's almost still clean."

"There's my other old one," said Merry, nodding at a bundle of cloth hanging from one corner of the wardrobe. "It hasn't seen a laundry yet. I'm afraid it might fall apart next time Dahlia wrings it out."

"It'll smell like you, then. Can I wear it?"

"All day," said Merry, and this time his smile was all for Pippin. "And I'll see you again tomorrow night, won't I?"

"Yes," said Pippin. "That's a promise."

# # # 

At the Farley breakfast, Darric brought Pippin a plate with eggs and muffins and lots of butter and jam. He hadn't forgotten what Pippin liked. Pippin gave him a smile of thanks, and got back a bigger smile.

"Eat it all," said Darric. "We're working together all day, you know." He lingered, almost hovering. "There's tea, and small ale."

The tea came in huge pots from the Farley kitchen, strong and even darker than the ale. Pippin doused it with milk and honey and drank two cups of it quickly, and an extra half-cup to wash down the last crumbs of muffin with a big spoonful of the apricot jam. Darric was a whole muffin and a half-cup of tea ahead of him already, and grinned at Pippin's spoon raiding the jam-jar. "D'you like that jam particularly?"

"Oh, well, I like blackberry and peach as well. But this is quite as good," said Pippin with a sidewise glance. He dipped his spoon into the jar again for emphasis and licked it at Darric.

Darric glanced around the large dining room, where six conversations -- some sleepy, some lively -- were going on besides theirs. "That could be nice. We might save a bit of it for after dinner. We'll need extra energy after pulling beets all day."

Pippin grinned. He was perfectly sure what Darric meant by "after dinner."

"I've been hoping to share it with you."

"You have?"

"You've grown up, Pip. I didn't see it until you came back, but you're a handsome lad."

Pippin looked at him in surprise. Merry never said anything like that, although sometimes the lasses in Buckland did. 

"I like you, too," he said, and dabbed a thumbprint of jam on the tip of Darric's nose. Someone on the other end of the table giggled.

"What'd you do that for?" 

"So I could do this." Pippin sidled closer, leaned in, and licked the jam back off. There were more giggles in the background, but Pippin didn't look around even when he recognized Amy's among them.

A voice from the far side of the dining room spoke up: "Save it for the harvest dinner, lads. There's a day's work waiting."

Pippin finally sat back and looked up. Mistress Farley -- Gammer Lila Farley, that was, Darric's grandmother -- was already beckoning the tweens from the two tables into groups and pairs. "You're all in the north field, you and you and you and you," including Darric and Pippin. "I'll show you where to start."

# # # 

Merry dumped an armful of dirt-crusted beets into one of the square baskets at the end of the row he'd been digging up. He stopped for a moment to watch Mistress Brambilla Farley, who'd halted her pony-wagon in the shade of a clump of trees near the cart-path. She was matching baskets with the spaces on her heavily-loaded wagon.

She frowned back at him, a thoughtful frown worn into the creases of her face, and nodded. "Excellent timing, lad. Help me heave this one up and I'll be back for more later."

She and Merry grasped wicker handles, lifted, and pushed the nearly-full basket onto the wagon-bed, and Brambilla set about securing the back panel. The sky was cloudy and the air almost cool, which made the labor of harvest less sweaty than it might have been. They'd work until last light today, and work again tomorrow until the fields were cleared.

"The Took said Gammer Farley said it wouldn't rain too soon for us," said Merry, pausing a moment to pet Sugar's dark-sugar-colored mane. 

"Aye, she's sure. I'm not," said Brambilla, rolling her eyes at the veil of clouds above. "Excepting that she's been right about the harvest weather since I've known her."

Brambilla had been married to a Farley long enough to have three sons among the harvesters. "Let's hope she's right this season too," said Merry, and noticed the pony's restless ears and twitching neck. "Is Sugar nervous?"

"Sugar's a silly little pony this season. It's nothing time won't cure." Brambilla's hands smoothed over the round, sugar-brown flanks, her gentle motion belying her exasperated voice. "Ponies are willful creatures at best and our Sugar is," now she grinned at Merry, "a Brandybuck among ponies."

Merry widened his eyes at her in mock indignation and patted Sugar again. "All the better for her." 

"Depends on the circumstance, lad. Back to the beets with you now."

Merry returned to his row of pale purple and white roots, waving to Allin Farley five rows over and Morigrand Took five rows in the other direction. Other Tooks and Farleys could be seen farther down the field, all busy. Brambilla and Sugar moved at a sedate pace up the dusty path toward the next baskets.

# # # 

At tea-time, a cart brought out a meal for the harvesters, along with Amethyst and Pimpernel to serve it. Farley House sent meat pies and cakes and plenty of apple juice and and cider. Merry spotted Pervinca, who'd been harvesting a few sets of rows behind him, sidling up to the food with enthusiasm and offering a sweat-bedewed kiss to her sister on the way.

"Get off me, 'Vinca, you're all dirty."

"Well, you should be too! We've been working today. What have you done?"

Amethyst giggled at both of them. "Kiss me too and I'll give you an apple-cake." She had a large tray of them ready for the harvesters.

"We've been cooking," said Pimpernel. "Since dawn. Somebody has to feed you all."

"Then maybe you should me let me eat," said Pervinca, grabbing two apple cakes and two meat-pies rolled in napkins.

"Ha!" said Merry, who'd had his eye on the apple cakes for himself. "I see your cunning plot now! Leave some for the rest of us!"

Pervinca smiled at him and held up the double portions, her dark-chestnut eyelashes fluttering. "Will you join me for the meal, Master Meriadoc? Perhaps you'd be good enough to fetch us some cider." She crossed the cart-path to sit down in the shade of some trees. Pimpernel rolled her eyes and whispered, "Pippin's not the only one who's decided to tumble the whole Shire one by one this year. She's just making sure Pippin doesn't outdo her."

"Does that make a difference?" asked Merry, to buy time. He rather liked Pervinca, whose flirting was all games and tricks and had a delicate edge like a kitten's claws. She wasn't Pippin; but even among the Tooks, nobody was quite like Pippin. 

Pippin, who was off in the north field today, harvesting with Darric. 

"I have other things on my mind," said Pimpernel from her lofty thirty-two years, and Amethyst giggled again. "At least I keep company with the same person for more than a day at a time. I'd heard you like to do the same."

"Usually," said Merry. "But among the Tooks, perhaps I should follow the Tookish custom." He leaned over and gave her a kiss just as Pervinca had, with perhaps a touch more cousinly affection in it.

"Merry, there are hungry hobbits waiting for their tea," said Pimpernel, freeing herself.

Merry just grinned at her, waggled his eyebrows at Amethyst, and seized two tin mugs off the cart for cider. 

He heard Pimpernel's voice while he filled them from the pitcher. "You deserve each other."

He turned back and gave a shallow bow, mindful of the full mugs in either hand. "I can hope so, Nellie."

He made his way through the harvest workers around the food-cart and across to where Pervinca was waiting. "Your sister thinks we deserve each other."

Pervinca raised her eyebrows, as languidly as if she sat in a cool drawing-room instead of under a tree with dirt on her toes and not a little under her fingernails. "Do we?" She passed him a meat pie and a clean napkin and accepted a mug. "Thank you."

"That's for you to say, pretty lass. Do you think we'd suit each other for tonight?" He wasn't sure if he wanted her to say yes, but it was all a game. It wouldn't matter past tomorrow either way. Would it?

"Oh, don't you have other plans? Such a well-favored hobbit-lad is surely spoken for already." The chestnut eyelashes waved back and forth at their surroundings, giving Merry to understand that bevies of Tookish and Farley tweens might spring from anywhere momentarily, begging his attention.

"Not if you speak now."

"In that case, dear Merry, how can I refuse?" She dabbed crumbs off her face with dainty care.

She wasn't anything like Pippin, really. "If you don't want to, you say no. That's how you refuse, you ninny." He applied himself to the meat pie -- seasoned with onion and herbs and worth a few minutes' full attention -- until he heard her giggle. "Hmm?" His mouth was full.

She said, "You're a silly Brandybuck, Cousin, but I do think you're handsome. Are you really sure there's no one else for you tonight?"

Pippin... was elsewhere. By choice. "No one like you," he assured her. "Shall I meet you after supper?"

"At the bath-house," she said, with an unnecessarily conspiratorial air. "It makes one feel lively again after a hot day."

"Does that mean you or me?" he asked, but it was a good idea.

"Oh, I never speak for anyone else." She held out one of the apple-cakes, a heavy-crusted bundle soft inside and sticky with baked apples and honey. "Have this one -- it's bigger."

"Wouldn't you like the bigger one?"

"Oh..." She held his eyes for a moment and then blinked at him once slowly, with her eyelashes. "I like my companion to have the _biggest_ one." 

Merry bit into the apple cake and revelled in the first delicious mouthful. 

He choked on the second. 

Pervinca did the eyelash-blink at him again. "I'm always right, you know."

# # # 

Pervinca settled herself next to Merry on the pillows and blanket they'd arranged in a shrub-enclosed garden nook between two branches of the Great Smials. The evening air was cool enough that most hobbits would be inside tonight, but it wasn't too cool for Merry. The moonlight, hazed by wisps of cloud, made them both into outlines and shadows.

Pervinca leaned back onto him, warm in the cool dusk, and let him find her lips for a kiss without so much as a single teasing remark. Merry felt her mouth as softer and warmer than he remembered, and slower to respond. "Are you sure you're not too tired for games?" he asked.

"Merry, when have I ever been too tired for anything you could do?" She moved against him with a resilient bounce, and Merry felt a familiar warm pressure start to rise deep in his belly. 

He grinned in the dark. "Well enough. But it's been a full day."

"Are _you_ tired, pretty lad?"

"Of course not!" He slipped an arm around her waist and felt her snuggle deeper into the embrace: soft, warm, languid and now there was a warm mouth exploring his neck. He found something warm and soft to explore as well and felt Pervinca murmur approval against his skin. She wasn't reedy and still slim-waisted, like Pippin, but fuller and rounder all over. He found some interesting hills and valleys and didn't ignore any of them.

A few minutes later she stretched back from him. _"Merry."_

"Eh, pretty lass?"

"You'd better not be teasing me. You'd better not be too tired to finish what you're starting." She sounded a good deal like Pippin now, even if Pippin had never complained on this subject. Yet. Merry's mind presented him with an image of Pippin roused and tousled and unmistakably ready... waiting for him... 

This wasn't Pippin with him now and it wasn't fair to think of anyone else, even her brother, while Pervinca was very much in his arms and he in hers. Merry pushed her back against a pillow. "Oh, you think I'm just starting, do you?" He settled himself onto her, not too heavily but close enough that she would feel his state of arousal.

"Ah-hah!" she crowed, from under him. "I'm always ri--"

"Mmm?" He kissed her, and her hands wandered merrily, and it wasn't long before he'd forgotten the question entirely, and thoughts of Pippin faded into the future.

# # # 

"You have the most beautiful mouth," said Darric, while Pippin lolled and stretched on the muslin sheets of Darric's bed, disdaining blankets for the moment and not mussing the folded-back, embroidered counterpane that was probably months of work from one of the Farley aunts. "I can't believe I never noticed it before. And your eyes are like dawn."

"What?" Lasses liked it when you told them their eyes were brighter than dew on the flowers, or whatever, but it sounded strange from Darric. He opened his eyes wide, wondering what they really looked like, but he kept them open to watch Darric undress. "You've grown a bit, too, haven't you? You're getting to look the proper hobbit." 

"Perhaps I am." Darric grinned and stretched, displaying himself much as Pippin was doing, and leapt onto the bed next to him. "Pippin..." His face hovered just above kissing distance.

"I'm right here." He tried to pull Darric down on top on him, but Darric went on hovering, body not quite touching.

"Do you really like me?"

"Of course I like you. You're my friend." He sensed that Darric meant something a bit more, but he couldn't say, "you're my best friend," because that wasn't true. "You're the finest-looking lad in Tookland, except maybe me." 

Darric laughed. "Well, maybe you're right about that." His hovering weight landed on Pippin, not too heavy, not too slight. It felt wonderful. Pippin pushed up into it, kissed the willing mouth on his, welcomed its warmth and the tickling slide of tongue on tongue, and forgot everything but where he was and who he was with.

Much later, on the edge of sleep, it occurred to him that Merry was the finest-looking lad now in Buckland. And Merry _was_ his best friend.

# # # 

Pervinca leaned her head on Merry's shoulder, both of them happily sweaty. Her hair felt like Pippin's when it brushed his neck, and nearly the same under his fingers when he ruffled it in the older-cousin way he always ruffled Pippin's hair.

"Do that again," she said. 

"What, this?" He ruffled his fingers through her curls. "It feels nice, but don't most lasses have longer hair?"

"I'll let it grow later. I still like to climb trees and sometimes I even swim... Oh, but don't tell Mum that. She thinks the water is dangerous." She pulled a garment from somewhere in the dark and let it fall over their bodies like a too-small coverlet. For the moment it was enough warmth for the two of them. "But what'll you do when you grow up, Buckland lad?"

"I'll be in Buckland. What else? But meanwhile I'm here." 

"I'm glad. I wanted to claim a night with you before you're taken."

Taken? wondered Merry. Am I? How can I be taken if the one I want is still dancing with every tween in the Shire? "Do you think I'm ready to settle down and choose?" he asked.

"I almost thought you had, with the Baggins lad, but that's not it for you, is it?"

"Not him," said Merry, realizing with a pang that his friendship with Frodo would be different from now on, and not only because Frodo's heart had found Sam. 

"Then who?"

Merry pulled back. "Ah, ah, dear cousin. That would be telling."

"You mean, you're not sure of the one."

Merry smiled at her. "Something like that. You're a warm, round lass, but it's not you, for me. I hope you're not disappointed."

"Not I." Pervinca stretched, brushing Merry with a multitude of rounded curves, then did it again. "I like being tween instead of grown-up like Pearl and Mum. It lets me play with you." Merry reflected that Pippin wasn't the only Took who'd break some hearts.

"But later you'll marry someone, I'll bet."

She pushed her head into his neck, and the curls felt exactly like Pippin's. "I might. I think I will. I'd like to have babies when I'm old enough."

"Everyone has babies when they're old enough." 

"Not everyone. I think maybe Nellie won't. But I really want to, when I'm of age, and there's a nice lad who'll stand up with me and all." She giggled, and the hand in Merry's hair turned suddenly childish and tugged at one lock of it sharply. "Not you, pretty lad. Not unless you mend your tween-aged ways."

"I'm not even of age!"

"You will be, soon enough. Then what?"

# # # 

Uncle Ferumbras tapped the small, fat volume that Merry had returned to him. "History is full of nonsense, of course. These 'orcs' must have been wild beasts, bears or somesuch. I daresay there _were_ wolves."

"I've heard..." Merry recalled vividly Bilbo's tales of being chased and kidnapped by orcs. They'd been something like very ill-behaved men, or perhaps small trolls, Merry thought, but he couldn't bring to mind a description that proved they were or weren't either of those things. "...orcs prefer the dark. No one could say what they look like."

"Or what they were," snorted Ferumbras. "Mind, one can't gainsay one's ancestors. Old Bullroarer defeated a great many enemies -- whatever they were -- with that very sword that's hanging in the large parlor over the fireplace. Hard to credit, but the sword's there."

"He was said to be very tall." Merry sketched a height of four feet or more, above his own head. 

"Most unnaturally so, if one believes everything certain tale-tellers care to put into the story. But," he shook his head at Merry's polite hesitation, "we can't spend all our time on bygone battles. Even though we have all our root crops in the cellars, there's still work to be done." 

"Yes?" said Merry, relieved not to be discussing Bullroarer Took's exploits with someone who wouldn't believe in orcs. He glanced at the study's one window, where thick glass let in gray daylight but none of the rain that poured out of the sky. "Yes, I see that's good." Gammer Farley had been proved right yet again. The autumn rains were now coming down in earnest.

"And what we do next is..." Ferumbras paused and cocked his well-combed white head, but Merry knew he liked to finish his own sentences. "...inventory the lot!"

"Oh. Yes." 

"Mistress Hedgerow wants to be cooking and canning -- she's always keen to keep ahead of the Farley kitchens, and I can't say she's wrong. But--" he surveyed Merry again, "we'll not know if we're ahead of them if we don't know what we have, d'you follow me, lad?"

"Yes, sir. I've heard the same at home," Merry sighed.

"You have? So Master Brandybuck keeps his stores all listed and labelled, does he?" Ferumbras' pale-ginger eyebrows bristled. Merry smiled and said nothing. "Does that smirk mean you don't know, or you don't care to say, lad?

Merry nodded, no longer smiling. "I shouldn't discuss Brandy Hall's business, sir."

"Haw!" A Tookish guffaw resounded through the study. "Well, that's proper of you, and I'll make my own guesses. But--" he sobered, "as it happens, _we_ keep lists and accounts. I want a current inventory of the food stores. Mistress Hedgerow has the keys and she'll direct you, but I don't want her lists. I want yours. By tomorrow."

"Sir?" Merry had only a sketchy idea of Great Smials' storage pantries and cellars, but he was sure there were a lot of them. And he'd have to write everything down. It would take days, surely.

"At tea, tomorrow. And don't trouble yourself counting the wine and ale and such -- I want a listing of the solid foods from this year's harvests and any other that's still good. Give me quantities and conditions of storage and anything else that occurs to you. You have a neat enough hand for making lists, lad, and remember that I have to read 'em."

"Yes, Uncle," said Merry, resigned. It was going to be a very long day.

# # # 

Pippin sprawled himself over half of Merry's bed and read aloud, "Second north store-room, in bushel baskets: Eight bushels of great beets, _eighteen_ bushels of red beets, six bushels and a half of onions, the half being from last year's crop and very much sprouted..." Pippin glared at the sheet of foolscap. "I think you mis-spelled a word here."

"Did not."

"Well, I can't read it. Perhaps it's your writing."

"Uncle Ferumbras says I have a neat hand... for a lad of my age." 

Pippin picked out a pear from the plate of apples and pears and cheese on the bed-table that was Merry's supper. "He has you in to talk to every day. Twice a day, sometimes."

Merry, seated on the other half of the bed, picked up a pear for himself before Pippin got them all. He'd missed supper at table, and he'd counted through barely half of the store-rooms in the Great Smials. "It's work, Pip. It's like being his apprentice for the season, but I think he's mostly laughing at me."

"At you?" Pippin seemed astonished, for all that he himself laughed at Merry every day and often. "He likes you." He bit into the pear, heedless of juice on his chin and fingers. 

"He likes the chance to order a Brandybuck around," said Merry, feelingly, but he had to add: "He's not mean about it. Those lists -- put them down before you get them sticky -- aren't make-work. They're useful. For now I'm the one handy to do it, and I'll be the one handy to oversee the goat breeding lists, and the smokehouse curing lists, and... everything has a list. I had no notion there was so much _writing_ to be done for business." 

Pippin looked alarmed and picked up an apple, discarding his pear's gnawed core. "Am I going to have to know all of this?" 

"I suppose. Later. You'll be The Took someday, won't you?"

"I guess," said Pippin. "Father says so, when he wants me to do something. He's Uncle Ferumbras' next-in-line cousin, anyway." 

"Doesn't he talk to you about it?" Merry had been made aware from an early age that no matter what he did or wanted for himself, Brandy Hall would be waiting for him, stock, barrels, fields, orchards, stables, mathoms and all, not his alone but the Brandybucks'. 

"Not very much. He says I'm too young."

"He'll stop saying that soon enough. You'll be the handy one next season, see if you aren't."

Pippin didn't look convinced.

"You're a Took. He'll tell you more than he's telling me about Took business. He's not showing me everything because he knows I'm going to be Master of Brandy Hall, and not of Great Smials. Sometimes he acts like I might bid against him at market tomorrow."

"You _will_ be the Master," Pippin pointed out. 

"Not for a good long time, I hope. I want to do things... I don't know what I want, but I don't have it yet." He knew one thing he wanted, but he couldn't ask it of Pippin, not for a long time. Pippin liked him. Pippin loved him, even. Pippin was an enthusiastic bedmate any night you could catch his attention. What more could Merry ask from a cousin too young to think of the future? 

Pippin grabbed the last piece of cheese on the plate. "Do you want to tumble?" He took a bite.

"Now?"

"Whenever you want. And now, too." 

Merry nipped the once-bitten cheese out of his hand. "Whenever I want?"

Pippin's eyes stayed on the cheese in Merry's hand. "Um, I meant, now. Whenever..." In the lamp-light his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were very bright. "Merry, I like it with you. Don't you care?"

Merry's heart, or stomach, or something of the sort, felt strangely constricted and he put the last fragment of cheese back down. "Of course I want you. Whenever _you_ want. Come here right now." He pulled Pippin's hand to his mouth and began licking the warm, pear-sticky fingers. 

"Ooh, ahhh... That's very nice."

Merry smiled around the pad of a thumb and suckled on it. Pippin inhaled sharply. "Ummm, Merry, you... yes." His other hand reached for Merry's shoulder and tugged, and both of them fell back onto the folded extra blanket at the foot of the bed, Merry's mouth still around two of Pippin's fingers. "Yes, like that," said Pippin, momentarily satisfied. 

Merry freed his mouth and undid Pippin's two top shirt-buttons with his teeth. "Like this?"

"Y-- yes," said Pippin on a gulp.

Merry licked the exposed triangle of throat. He felt Pippin's hands on his shoulders, sliding up his neck, into his hair. "Mmmm?"

"Yes," whispered Pippin. "Merry..." He urged Merry upward, and Merry raised his head and kissed Pippin full on the mouth, tasting cheese and apple and Pippin all at the same time. Pippin rolled beneath him and Merry found it necessary to put both arms around him. Their bodies fitted together, discovering again the delight of mutual friction. "Merry..." said Pippin. "Oh, yes. Anything."

That was too much to be ignored. Merry pulled away just enough to see Pippin's face and said, dangerously, " _Any_ thing?" as if Pippin had suggested putting a garter snake in the kitchen or hiding Pearl's best earrings in the compost heap. 

Pippin glared at him. "Not if you think it's a joke. I meant it."

Merry dropped the tone of play-acted danger, and freed one hand to stroke down the side of his beloved cousin's face. "Anything? That's so much, you know." He felt a catch in his throat as he looked into Pippin's wide eyes.

"I mean it." Softly. "I don't know... everything, but I want it. With you."

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes." 

"Everything?" Oh. "What sort of everything?" 

Pippin ducked his face into Merry's shoulder -- and did not stop the slow rolling push of body against body, which was making Merry really rather warm by now. Merry said, "There's a lot of everything. What do you want?"

"You... your... um." He pulled one of Merry's hands down until it rested on his hip, and Merry almost automatically curled it over the lovely round curve of Pippin's bottom. "Yes, um..." repeated Pippin, as if asking a question.

They rolled a little more and Merry arranged Pippin on top, their bodies still jogging comfortably together while Pippin moaned at every squeeze and caress on his backside. Finally Pippin raised his head and took a deep breath. "I meant I wanted, well, now I just want not to be wearing these breeches!"

"Me too." Merry freed one hand to work at the buttons, and slipped his other hand inside as the trousers loosened, to smooth over bare skin. 

"Ah!" Pippin pushed against him once, hard and letting him feel it, and then arched up to let Merry tug and slither the trousers away. "You too," he said, breathlessly, before Merry could forget his own, and freed a hand from clutching Merry's shoulder to help. When they were both bare, Pippin's hand lingered, fondling, curling around him and stroking firmly.

Merry found he was breathing hard, mouth open. "Keep on doing that and I'll love you more than ever," he said, shakily, "but there won't be any more 'everything' tonight." 

"Ohh," Pippin paused, eyes glinting now. "I shall have to think on it, shan't I?" His hand stilled, only squeezing very lightly to show the subject of his considerations. "That's all right, you just go on with what you were-- Merry!"

Merry wriggled his fingers where they were cradled in the cleft between one round buttock and the other. "You were saying?" He pressed into close warmth, watching Pippin's face and feeling his way.

Pippin gave a squeak. "I-- ah-- everything. Now. Don't stop." His hand remained curled around Merry's erection, possessive but still, and Merry felt a pang of joy deep in his chest as well as the hot joy of their bodies. 

"If you want it. If you want me to go slower, I will." 

"Just keep on wi-- yes!"

Merry moved his embedded finger minutely within the tight grip that had closed around it. 

"Do that, yes..." whimpered Pippin, body clenched still and sweating, eyes closed. "I feel you inside. Oh, yes, that's..." He went into a high, wordless moan. Very slowly he lay down on Merry's body, not relaxing at all, but then he twitched, once. "Oh." The tension around Merry's hand eased a little, shivering instead of clenched tight. "Oh. Now."

Merry didn't move, holding him still and close. "Is this the first time you've had anyone do this with you?" He was sure of it.

Pippin nodded against his shoulder. "Ye-- esss... Want you. More." 

"I want you too. Feel it?" Merry pushed up just a bit with his hips, jostling their close-pressed erections together. He was achingly hard and ready, but how much was Pippin ready for? 

Pippin's head tilted up, wide eyes meeting Merry's. "Oh, is that what... inside me...?"

"If you want it." He pushed up again, jostling the paired warmth between them, and felt Pippin push down onto him as well. The harsh slide of sensitive groin against groin didn't stop the ripple of pressure around his buried finger. 

"Ohhh. You feel so good, both places."

"It does feel good," said Merry.

Pippin's eyes were still on him. "You've done this. Umm, like this." He pulsed around Merry's finger and then gasped softly.

Merry smiled. "Yes. Exactly like that. And more."

"Oh..." Pippin's eyes slipped half shut. "Yes. Exactly like this. And more." The body resting on Merry wriggled purposefully. "Soon, if it's... all the... soon." Pippin didn't stop shifting, his motions taking on a purposeful urgency. "Oh, Merry... ohahhh..."

Merry pulled him down a little tighter. He had enough thought left to remember that they didn't have any of the goose-fat or oil that would make it better and easier. "This time, just like this." He swallowed, seeing on Pippin's face the wonderful, desperate need to finish _now_. "For now. More later." He let the buried finger move a bit -- it was hard not to, with Pippin rocking and pushing against him -- and Pippin's eyes opened and looked straight into his.

Pippin said on a gasp, "Yes, Merry." Another gasp. "Anything." 

Then he pushed his head into Merry's neck and his hot, needy body pressed full against Merry's where very similar needs were becoming just as urgent, and there was really no reason to think about anything except fitting themselves together as close as they already knew how while Pippin moaned and Merry gasped under him. The heat deep under his belly grew too full to bear, too full to last for long.

Pippin gasped into his neck while Merry felt the heat rise and spill into the sweaty wetness between their bellies and felt Pippin's heat spill a moment later. 

He held his cousin while they both caught their breath, while Pippin slowly relaxed without moving away. Merry freed his hand and stroked over the curve of Pippin's bottom, almost as though he'd never interrupted that act. 

Pippin opened his eyes again. "Do you love me?" He sounded a little puzzled, as if he were questioning himself rather than Merry.

Merry wondered why Pippin bothered to ask, but he himself was sure: "I love you, Pippin. You're my best cousin."

Pippin frowned in thought and blinked once. "Do you think my eyes are pretty?"

"I love your eyes, and they are pretty, but that's not why I love you."

"Then why?"

"Just you." 

"Is that all?" Pippin tucked his head back into Merry's shoulder. "When I'm The Took, will you still like me?" He still sounded uncertain. "Because if you won't, I'm going to do something else." 

Merry gave a single wry chuckle. "You just try."

"I will," insisted Pippin.

"That might be hard, you know. Everyone will want you to be The Took." 

"So what?"

"Everyone already wants me to be the Master-in-waiting for Brandy Hall." Merry thought of a sheaf of blank paper and too many store-rooms waiting for him in the morning. "Come and count food stores with me tomorrow. You can help me get this list done on time and you'll see what it's like. You haven't promised anyone to spend tomorrow with them, have you?"

"Not like-- I mean, not tomorrow." Pippin tilted his face up, eyes searching Merry's face. "I'll come do it. If you're going to know where every morsel of food in the smial is, I'd like to know too."

"Good. Are you sleeping here?" 

"If you want me." 

Merry rolled both of them over and pulled up the blanket they'd been lying on so it covered them. "I want you. Stay with me." Merry kissed the head that had tucked itself back beneath his chin and stretched to put the lamp out. Stay with me forever, he thought, and: if only you can love me that much.

# # # 

Merry had already discovered that Jaspara Hedgerow knew everything. The head housekeeper of Great Smials knew her domain from the smallest needle-box to the largest chamber, the very room with Old Bullroarer's sword over the fireplace and three large south windows. "Himself and Master Paladin are having tea in the large parlor today," she told Merry and Pippin. "There's enough for four. I told him you'd be along to see him before he was finished."

"Thank you, Mistress Hedgerow," said Merry. "For all your assistance these two days, and also for the meal."

"A lad needs his food," she said, "The both of you. I'm only surprised Master Pippin counted those stores instead of eating them whole." She gave them a nod and left them in the main hallway. If she saw Pippin's affronted look, she ignored it.

Merry unfolded and refolded his finished storeroom inventory while Pippin frowned nervously toward the large parlor. "Come on, Pip, let's show them what we've done." He started to tap at the parlor door.

"We shouldn't interrupt them," hissed Pippin.

"Uncle Ferumbras told me to deliver the food-store lists by tea-time, that is, _now_ ," said Merry, and pulled Pippin with him into the room. He was immediately confronted by two pairs of piercing-gray Took eyes, paler than the green eyes Pippin had from Aunt Eglantine. 

"Merry, come in," said Ferumbras, putting down his tea cup. "I'm surprised to see you so early. Pippin, are you here for tea?"

"Uncle Ferumbras, Father," said Pippin. "I'm here with Merry."

"Good afternoon, sir, Uncle Paladin."

"Merry?" Uncle Ferumbras' eyebrows asked for an answer.

"Sir, Pippin has been helping me with the inventory. I couldn't have done it so quickly without his help, both in counting and in finding my way around the smial." 

Uncle Paladin eyed Pippin, who stood frozen beside Merry. Uncle Ferumbras pressed his lips together and then came out with, "Haaw!" He looked them both over, ending with Merry. "We'll see. D'you have 'em done, lad?"

"Here, Uncle." Merry handed over the stack of papers. Ferumbras put down his teacup, pushed aside a plate of walnut-topped buns and set the list on the table to peer down at.

"As long as you're here, lads, you might as well have some tea," said Uncle Paladin. "Pippin, find the extra cups and plates on that tray, if you will. Make yourself useful."

"Yes, Father." Pippin sounded quieter than usual, but he always did with Uncle Paladin. "Merry, you'll want two pieces of ham pie, won't you?"

"Please." Merry took up a knife and fork and started to make up for a very hasty lunch. A few bites later he looked around and saw Uncle Ferumbras' eyes on him. "Uncle?"

"You found the far east-smial cellar, I see. I thought it was blocked off when the east-kitchen chimney collapsed last year."

"There's a way around into it," said Pippin.

"But everything in it now is old," said Merry. 

"It takes a bit of climbing," said Pippin, looked at his father and his father's senior cousin, and quickly took a large bite of ham pie.

"You have to go through the old part of the chimney," finished Merry, watching both the older hobbits anxiously after seeing Pippin's wariness. 

Paladin raised a hand to his mouth and coughed in a way that was suspiciously like laughter. Ferumbras nodded and swallowed before he came out with an explosive "Haw!" After another healthy swallow from his large tea-cup he said, "Do you think the route you took could be opened up for use? That was a good storeroom, if I recall. Do you think it's still sound?"

"I'd have a smialer look at it," said Merry. "Mistress Hedgerow says--"

"I'll wager she says Erengrim Hedgerow-Took will know what's what," said Uncle Ferumbras, which echoed most of what Merry was about to say. "A chimney, oh, my!" He pushed the plate of walnut-buns toward Merry. "It could be a useful find, lads." He looked over at Pippin, who was still industriously chewing. "It seems you do know your way around the smial, Pippin."

"I wasn't alone, and Mistress Hedgerow knew where we were," Pippin said quickly, with a glance at Uncle Paladin.

Merry realized why Pippin had been so nervous. "He was with me. It's my responsibility."

"So it is," said Uncle Paladin, his brows lowering now at Merry. And, after a moment, "Erengrim might need a bit of help looking into that storeroom. I'll send him to you two when he has the time for it."

"Yes, Uncle," said Merry, not sure whether to count it a prize or a punishment. Both, perhaps.

"And for tomorrow, lads," beamed Uncle Ferumbras over the sticky remains of walnuts and sugar on his plate, "how much have you learned about goats?"

# # # 

"You don't have to help me in the barns if you don't want to," said Merry, when Pippin followed him to first breakfast the next day, wearing his harvest-work clothes. "Uncle Ferumbras said so."

Pippin poured out fruit-spice tea -- brought from the south, Merry now knew, not made in the Shire -- for both of them with careless generosity. "The Farley tweens will be here all day today. Nellie invited them."

"In that case, why aren't you with them? Allin and Darric..." 

"I'm following you around so Darric doesn't follow me around." 

"Should he?" asked Merry. "I mean, shouldn't he? He's one of your friends." He put a spoonful of honey in his teacup and another on his bread, and handed the spoon to Pippin.

"He, um... I'm not sure quite how I like him," said Pippin, shame-faced, clutching the spoon without using it. "He's a fine lad. He likes me."

"Is there something wrong with that?" Everyone always liked Pippin. 

"He likes me too much, somehow. It's nice, but I'm not sure if... the way you like me... but I just don't," Pippin finished on a firmly inconclusive note. He took a large bite of bread and cheese and honey with the air of someone who has finished talking.

Merry, not sure what to say or even if anything ought to be said, applied himself to bread and cheese, and bread and honey, and tea, for some minutes. Pippin liked him, or loved him, and maybe it was more than just being cousins and tweens. Maybe Pippin was learning that you always liked some tweens more than others. Finally he said, carefully, "You and he...?"

"He and I kept company while I was at Farley house. It was fine. But I like him, and he wants me to like _him_." 

"Is it different?" 

"I want... I don't want just him."

"You're acting like you don't want him at all."

"Not today," said Pippin, and suddenly the light of mischief, or perhaps it was happiness, was back in his eyes. "Today, I want to see you make more lists. Lists about goats. What are we going to do with the goats?"

Merry drank his tea. "Whatever Master Lodo wants us to do."

# # # 

Pippin saw a few changes since the last time he'd been in the goat-barn with Merry: since the beet harvest, since Merry started counting and writing all the time. Each of the pens had more goats now, and there were _two_ hobbit-children following one of the barn workers named Torherm on feed rounds, one staggering under a basket nearly as broad as she was tall. Several bundles of hay rested on a low pallet, off the ground and less tempting to mice, but ready to hand. The barn cat, a sleek, knee-high, orange-striped beast, prowled dangerously along one wall with a twitch in its tail that suggested one less mouse alive in the near future.

It wasn't raining today but the sky was low and misty, and so was the light from the narrow, deep-shaded windows. The barn seemed a place for goats and not hobbits. Hay rolls still waited overhead, away from the windows, but the center part of the barn was open to a high emptiness that no hobbit-hole would ever need. Pippin knew there were hobbit-rooms on the other side of the barn, for storage and for Master Lodo and his assistants. They often ate meals and sometimes slept there, but this barn, like the even bigger pony-barn, was meant for animals that liked hay and sky better than a warm burrow. When he was a child it had been a place for adventures, the rafters and roof easier to climb in than trees.

Merry had a sheet of paper in his hand and was looking over at the large pen with nannies and half-year kids. Pippin asked, "Are we counting animals today?"

"No, Master Lodo knows them all by name already. He wants this breeding list from last year to look at before we move any of them. We're to assist him and try not to get in his way, Uncle Ferumbras says." He set off toward the hobbit-room side of the barn, and Pippin followed him. 

"Will we be leading goats around?" Pippin thought he'd like that better than sweeping up the goat droppings.

They spent the first half of the morning doing every possible task for the care and maintenance of goats, or so it felt to Pippin. They milked and raked pens and filled feed troughs and soothed a lonely doe-goat who'd been left in one of the small pens by herself overnight and didn't like it. 

During this lull in the rhythm of the late-morning barn work, there was a polite rustle at the barn entrance. Two hobbits in visiting clothes instead of work clothes came down the lane between pens toward Merry and Pippin. 

"Hello, Darric, Allin," said Merry. "Have you come to tell us a tale and lighten our labor?"

Darric looked around at goats and more goats and at Merry inside the pen, petting Acorn. "Something like that. Is that how you care for your goats in Buckland?"

"Even a Tookland goat can get lonely," said Merry. "You're a fine lass, aren't you Acorn? You'll have Tillie and Millie and Tree to be with tomorrow, I'll bet." 

Allin asked, "Oh, is it that you're shuffling the herds for the winter? I don't think it's too late, but when do you do it in Buckland?"

"October," said Merry. "Right about now. Uncle Seredic pulled me into helping him with it last year."

Darric caught Pippin's eye and led him down the row of pens until Merry's voice wouldn't stop them talking to each other, although Pippin could still hear it. "Do you really like working with goats?" Darric inquired, his hand finding Pippin's. 

"It's something I should know about," said Pippin. And Merry was doing it. He tugged at Darric's hand to bring him closer, and Darric obliged with an arm around his waist and a whisper in his ear.

"If you were indoors, we could..."

"Do this," whispered Pippin, and turned his head to meet Darric's mouth. It was a kiss that promised more if Pippin wanted it, and so did the hand drifting downward over Pippin's backside. Darric was a friendly lad. Darric was his friend. Pippin wriggled into the touch. "Mmm-hmm."

Still, he heard Merry's voice: "I don't really know what The Took is planning here, but..."

"Maybe you'll come back to the smial for lunch... and afters?" 

"Maybe." Pippin gave him a look and a teasing smile.

"... more milk from each nanny if..." 

Darric's hand felt very good squeezing gently up and down the seat of his trousers, but when Darric pulled him close enough to feel a warm push under his belly, it was a little more than Pippin was prepared to do with a doe-goat looking on. Or Loham or Master Lodo or any of the hobbits who worked in the goat-barn. 

"... more grain in the feed mix..."

Or even Merry. Pippin gasped and edged sideways. "I'll bet... I'll bet you've never been on the barn roof."

Darric pulled back, the hungry gleam in his eyes instantly replaced by a different gleam as he glanced up toward the rafters and the narrow window openings that now let in near-midday light. "Not in this barn." 

"Let me show you how to get up there. You'll love it." 

"... grazing on brush, but we had one goat -- she was some cousin's pet for a while -- that liked roses and blackberries and we had lots of blackberries that year, and her milk-- Pip, where are you going?"

"I think Darric needs to see how we store the hay," said Pippin. "On the rafters, like that."

Merry's glance up at them was amused at first. "Oh, well, you know better than to fall. Don't get Darric into trouble." Merry's eyes drifted to their still-clasped hands and an odd frown twisted his mouth for a moment and smoothed out. "Master Lodo will blame me if you do." He turned back to Allin and the care and feeding of goats.

Pippin led the way up a ladder, ran lightly along a hand-span-wide rafter, and waited for Darric to follow. 

Moments later he was peering down through the newly-uncovered skylight door -- it was always closed when rain was possible -- at a cluster of upturned faces: Merry, Allin, several goats, and Torherm. 

"I didn't say you could go skywalking!" shouted Merry.

"You didn't say I couldn't!" Behind Pippin, Darric laughed. The top of the barn was flat enough to walk on, absurdly easy to sit on while they looked down through the roof door. The sky above was cloudy gray but lighter than being inside the barn.

"You'd better not go sky- _diving_ ," returned Merry. "I'm telling you right now, you don't have permission to break your neck!"

"I won't!"

The group of watchers in the barn stirred and a new face arrived below. Master Lodo craned up, looked back to Merry for a moment's exchange of speech, and looked up again. "Pippin Took, we know you can dance on that roof until the elves come home and never fall off. But if you or Master Darric--" There was an inaudible remark from Allin, accompanied by a gesture of scorn toward the pair on the roof; Darric laughed. "... If you break a roof-plank or leave the skylight open, it'll rain in and the hay will go moldy."

"The goats will go hungry, because we'll make _you_ eat it," shouted Merry.

"Not that he wouldn't..." came Master Lodo's voice. 

"You, too, Darric!" shouted Allin. "You're frightening a lot of innocent goats down here!" 

"There's no such thing as an innocent goat!" Darric's rejoinder caused some head-shaking below among everyone but the goats. 

"All right, stay--" Pippin heard the shout break off at the same time he felt a drop of rain on his neck. Merry said, "Pippin, close that skylight _now_. I don't care which side of it you're on."

Pippin pulled the trapdoor over and closed, cutting off words to the effect that as there was no serving-kitchen or pantry on the barn roof, he'd have to come down when he got hungry. The door's inner latch clicked and held, and raindrops rolled down its gentle slope to drip onto the lower side of the roof.

"Can we get down?" asked Darric. He stood up slowly, looking in each direction in turn.

"We'll have to use the outside ladder," said Pippin. He stepped, carefully flat-footed, toward the center ridge. "It's over here at the end."

"Why don't we stay up here just for a bit? I can see Great Smials." Darric had sheltered his eyes with his hands and was peering through the treetops and the misty rain.

"Well..." More than a few plumes of thin gray smoke billowed from chimney-pots set in the tangle of mounded, half-buried tunnels covered with autumn-faded grass. Pippin thought he could pick out his room's smokeless chimney-pot in the row marked by Flora's schoolroom chimney at one end and at the other by the lumpy intersection of tunnels leading to the big sitting rooms and dining rooms used by all the Tooks in the smial.

"There's the big kitchen and the east kitchen and the north kitchen," said Darric, not bothering to point to the three heaviest smoke-drafts. "Nellie said they were cooking turnips with sweet beets and spices for lunch."

Pippin recalled with almost painful, mouthwatering clarity that sweet beets and Nellie's spices made even turnips taste wonderful. "That should be good."

Darric wasn't looking at the smial now, but at Pippin. "You're beautiful in this light." 

Pippin was having no more of that, but in fairness he took a moment to scrutinize Darric in the cool, rainy daylight. Water drops caught and beaded silver into the frizz of Darric's brown curls and on his eyelashes. Pippin knew his own hair went lank and dripping in any kind of rain. He'd been called "drowned rat" enough times. 

"I can't possibly be beautiful. You're just besotted. Or bewildered." Pippin stepped to where he was level with his swain and kissed him quickly, wondering if love should make you silly even if you weren't a lass. "Today I think we'd better just find the ladder and let Merry tell us we're fools."

# # # 

Merry met them on the ground and pulled them around to the lee side of the barn where the rain could barely be felt. He told them they were fools, but he didn't make Pippin go back to the smial. He did send a quick look at Pippin while he was saying it, as if he wanted to check whether Pippin wanted to go back with Darric and Allin to eat the spiced-turnip lunch that Nellie had promised them.

Pippin said he'd best stay and apologize to Master Lodo and the goats instead, but it was Merry he thought about. He'd half expected Merry to follow him up the ladder in the barn. He knew Merry would have liked it on the roof as much as he and Darric had, but Merry had stayed down with the barn goats. Whatever he was doing, he thought it was more important than climbing a roof for the fun of it. Pippin blinked as he realized what it meant that Merry was working for The Took, instead of just visiting Great Smials. 

Darric and Allin departed for the smial, Allin looking as though he wanted to give Darric a few plain words. Pippin was left with Merry looking at him, arms folded but somehow not looking very angry. "I will say you closed the roof door as fast as you could. And you got down by yourselves."

"Of course we did!" broke in Pippin.

Merry shrugged. "I knew you could. I wasn't worried." 

"Is that why you were yelling at me?"

"No, it was--" Merry unfolded his arms and took a step, and the next moment he'd grabbed Pippin around the waist and was holding him as close as a cousin and maybe a little more. "I love you, silly Took. I'm sometimes afraid you'll fly away from me, and then what?"

"Hobbits don't fly," said Pippin. "I'm staying here." He raised his head and tightened his arms around Merry and kissed him. When Merry kissed back, he pushed closer until the pressure of body on body was very friendly indeed. Like last night and the other times in Merry's bed. Last night he and Merry had played... it wasn't playing. It was loving. He loved Merry. Of course, he'd always loved Merry, the way he loved Pimpernel and Amy and Darric, but Merry meant more to him. 

Merry pulled back, eyes dark. "It's still raining," he said. "Your hair's all wet." 

"So's yours."

"We should go back in, if you're staying for the afternoon."

Pippin kissed him again for good measure. "Oh, yes. We should." He all but dragged his cousin into the dark barn, smelling hay and goats before his eyes cleared enough to see by the well-shielded lamp at the far end. "We should stay right in here for a bit." He pulled Merry close enough to feel the warm, strong, round body against him and then pushed even closer: warmth and strength and just enough more to make Pippin very interested.

"Pip, we shouldn't..." said Merry's whisper, tickling his ear.

Pippin ignored that. It was suddenly necessary for Merry to feel and know how important he was to Pippin. "Yes, we should," he whispered back, pushing Merry up against two of the fragrant, tight-tied hay rolls standing upright on the pallet. "It's lunch time. You're not working." Four more rolls stood behind those, still tied and heavy enough that they wouldn't fall over at a little push -- as Pippin knew from the morning's work. 

Merry gasped as Pippin pushed him against the lumpy wall of hay and tugged his shirt out of his trousers. "Don't..."

"Don't what?" asked Pippin, one hand up inside the shirt.

"I mean, leave the clothes on me. Just..." He put his arms around Pippin's neck and gathered him in so their bodies pressed together. 

Pippin kissed him, making the most of the close embrace. The damp clothing between their bodies couldn't disguise the growing bulge at crotch level. Pippin pushed closer, fitting himself to Merry, and gave a little hiss of pleasure as he found a position that cradled his hardness with Merry's.

Merry protested, "Lodo and the others will see us!" but he didn't try to free himself from the deliciously awkward position. Pippin could feel him rising into it, and a thrill ran up his backbone. There was a risk that Lodo or Loham would come looking for them, but it didn't matter any more. If they did, they'd see him with Merry. That was all right. 

Pippin whispered, "They're eating lunch. They'll think we've gone back to the smial for our lunch."

"We'll going to miss lunch if..." Merry's eyes gleamed at him in the near-dark. 

"If what?" Pippin didn't feel Merry pushing him away.

"If we... don't eat it now. Do you want..."

"I want you." Pippin fitted his aching erection more closely against Merry's, and the answering shudder told him he wasn't the only one aching.

Merry pulled him in tight. "I want you, too." He nudged Pippin's head up a bit and kissed him. 

Pippin cooperated, pushing both of them a little deeper between the two hay-rolls. "Maybe we should be quiet. They're all just down at the other end of the barn..." 

He saw Merry staring over his shoulder, wide-eyed. "Oh, bother." Before Pippin could feel more than a flash of panic, Merry said, "Pip... all the goats are _here_. They're looking."

"So what?"

Merry hissed, "So, they'll see us with our breeches open."

Pippin felt laughter threaten. "Oh, will they? Oh, please yes!" He leaned back far enough to start undoing his trouser-buttons, and then reconsidered and undid Merry's first. 

"Pip, they're watching us. They really are." He continued looking over Pippin's shoulder and didn't seem to notice that his trousers were completely open now.

"Maybe they'll learn something."

"The ones in that pen are all nannies," said Merry, on a breathless chuckle. "I'm not sure anything we can do will be useful to them."

"I don't care." By now, Pippin didn't care if all the goats in the Shire were watching them, and the barn cat too. "Merry, I don't care who's looking. I love you anyway."

Merry's hand, which had found its way into his trousers in spite of the goats, squeezed around him, deliciously hard, and held. "You do?"

"You're my best friend, and more. Don't stop."

"Would I be... your best friend... if I did stop?" whispered Merry, into his ear. His hand was moving again, slow and firm. 

"I'd bite you. I'd still love you, but I'd bite you."

"Can't have that," said Merry. "If I had to stop I'd want to bite you too. Maybe something softer than biting..."

"Do you want that?" Images of licking and mouthing all parts of Merry rained through Pippin's scattered thoughts. 

"Ye-- eee-- mmmph." Pippin quieted Merry's moan in a hard kiss. Merry's grip had him writhing, barely able to stay on his feet.

"Merry?" Pippin was losing his balance. "Let me... I'm going to..."

Merry didn't seem too inclined to let go, but he gasped when Pippin slipped a hand deeper into the confined space between his legs, fondling a handful of softer flesh, and his moment of distraction was enough for Pippin to go to his knees. He felt marginally more stable that way, but the best part was how close he was to some very private bits of Merry. He started with licking and went on to mouthing.

Merry writhed and groaned. "The hay is scratching me everywhere except..."

Pippin looked up, pausing.

"Don't stop! It's almost... I'm almost..." He looked down at Pippin. "You're everywhere. Don't stop."

Pippin met his eyes and then ducked his head to continue, feeling and tasting Merry's pleasure, hearing the croaking gasp above him as he swallowed deeply and wrapped his arms around Merry's hips to keep him from falling. 

Merry came down into his arms so they were kneeling together, Pippin now squirming with urgent arousal, Merry still gasping into his shoulder. It took a long moment for Merry to free one hand to touch Pippin where he needed it.

"Slow," mumbled Pippin, barely able to speak. "Quiet."

Merry slipped one arm around to support him, the other hand just touching, not squeezing or stroking. "Forever," he said softly into Pippin's ear, and moved just his fingertips. Slowly.

Pippin thrust his face into Merry's neck and bit his shirt-collar to keep from moaning aloud. Merry went on with the slow, stroking, thumb and finger slipping up and down his length now. Slowly. The other hand was inside the back of Pippin's unfastened trousers, stroking bare skin, dipping lower and teasing, light touches that promised something Pippin wanted. From Merry. He heard himself groan, deep in his throat, and tore his mouth away from Merry's shirt. "Can't... quiet... now..." he panted. 

Merry's touch closed around him, stroking smoothly, unbearably. "Shhh," he said. "We'll do it again later." He kissed the side of Pippin's mouth. "As much as you want." The stroking became a hard fist, pulling him to completion in a single breath and a groan that caught in Merry's shoulder.

He opened his eyes to find himself sprawled in Merry's lap. A hand still patted him warmly while Merry wiped the other on some bits of leaves and hay on the floor. Merry looked at him and then down at the hand on the floor. "I'm saving my handkerchief for you," he promised, and Pippin had to laugh, turning his face into Merry's shoulder again. 

"You love me, don't you?" he whispered.

"I wouldn't make anyone clean up with hay," said Merry, "but I do save my handkerchief for very special cousins." He pulled out a none-too-clean piece of cloth, wiped Pippin with it and tucked him back together inside his trousers, somehow removing the other hand from its warm seat in the process.

Pippin sighed and looked up to see that the goats had moved in a group to the far end of their pen and were staring at nothing in particular. Good, nobody was finished with lunch yet. There might be some food left.

Merry put both arms around him. "I love you, sweeting."

Pippin knew he liked that, but he still didn't know why. "Me too. It's different with you."

"Better?"

Merry always wanted to do better than anyone else. "It is better, but that's not what I meant. It's different. I don't mean the goats were watching, either."

"I think we bored the goats." 

"I don't care," said Pippin. "I want... will you always love me?"

Merry's arms tightened around him, and there was a choked little laugh in his ear. Merry said softly, "Yes, always. It won't even matter if you're Thain someday." 

"That's good. I couldn't bear it if you changed your mind. I want to love you forever."

Merry nodded and didn't let him go. "Do you think there's still any lunch?"

# # # # # # # 


End file.
